Whisper Marsh the anchor cast below

• @Rook. before the duties of young lords. Evening, partly cloudy, few stars, cool.
  We were tethered by the sea.
  We tied string around our fingers
  To remember our ideals.
  — Tethered, Sleeping At Last

Finally it looked as if Bishop might get a moment alone with her brother. Namid was sleeping — thank Pangur. Though Bishop had been cross and withdrawn from her brother, she would have been stupid not to latch on this opportunity to finally get a moment alone with him. She needed to be alone with him like she needed air. He was her twin, her other half, her better half even when she questioned his judgement. She needed to know that he needed her to, that she wasn't just some silly accessory on this ludicrous journey of his. Though she told herself again and again that Rook would be helpless without her, that he needed someone to do the talking and ask the important questions and to lick his ears, reality just wasn't lining up and it was starting to scare her. Right now it seemed very much like she was the one doing all the needing. She prayed to the Spirit that it wasn't true.

Gently she nosed her brother's paw and hoped that he would follow her as she wandered past the treeline they had taken shelter under and out into the softly rustling reeds of the marsh. Frog song resounded in the air and in the mud, and she felt a subtle trembling beneath her paws. Slowly, she closed her eyes, reveling in this hidden sensation of the summer night. "Oh Rook," she breathed. But when she opened her eyes he wasn't there yet. And she felt alone all over again even in the midst of a thousand croaking voices.

When Namid had settled down to sleep, Rook had laid down no more than a yard away from her. He was anticipating the calming sounds of nightfall coupled with both Namid and Bishop's tranquil breathing when he felt a cold nose against his paw. He lifted his head to watch his sister wander through the trees and out beneath the open sky where Whisper Marsh stretched out to reflect the very few stars that twinkled between the dark-lined clouds. As quietly as he could, he stood up and followed, only certain about a fraction of the topics that could possibly come up. Since both Klio and Namid had left an impression on their lives, the younger Lyall had been contending with the guilt that came with the several attempts he had made to separate himself from his age mate. He probably shouldn't have tested such a thing - the close-knit bond that they had - taking for granted the idea that Bishop would always be there for him. No matter what. Already their relationship was showing some strain. Even if Rook talked to her in passing, saw her for several hours of the day, slept beside her during the night, it was clear that even by just not communicating as they once had within their home at Renegades Reach was taking its toll. Out in the open the frogs that were making a ruckus sounded clearer and more interesting on the ears instead of being just a drone of tuneless serenades in the background. It did very little to drown out the sound of his sister's words, however, and as soon as those two simple words were said, his rounded ears fell. "Oh, Rook." He sidled up to her, sitting close enough to her so that he could feel her body heat radiating from her pelt. He bowed his head, focusing his eyes on the dark surface of the marsh as though the words he needed to saw would be reflected within it for him to comprehend. In-between the croaking and chirping, he sighed, knowing better than to ask what was wrong. Having known her since birth, it obvious for him to realize that she wasn't okay, that something was bothering her, that she was in distress. It pained him so... Ever so gently, he reached up to nibble at the base of her ear, the one singular gesture he commonly used to let her know that he was there for her... and only her.

Chances are I have a BEN WHISHAW gif for that.

She only had to speak his name and suddenly, like a prayer he was there beside her. These past few weeks had been so hard and for the first time she found herself rejoicing in simple things she had never thought to be thankful for: the sensation of him sitting just beside her, almost touching, and how she didn't even need to turn her head. She simply knew it was him in the same way she knew she was herself. For a moment she was alright, and she let him nibble behind her ear, feeling content and reassured and almost not wanting to say anything anymore. Bishop knew she would ruin the delicate grace of their happiness, but at the same time she felt pressured by the fact that their time alone together was fleeting. If she didn't say anything now, when would there be time? Would there ever be time? Desperately she clung to their perfect intimacy, and tried to shove her selfish thoughts back into the abyss in her soul from which they had come.

"How are you, brother?" she asked finally, her voice hushed, her words only for him. It was a sad thing to have to ask Rook such a thing. Her ears turned backwards and her head drooped as she turned to face him, her pale yellow eyes staring up at him longingly. "Tell me what you think of." She longed to be inside his head and romp once more among his clever and wildly foreign thoughts. His soul had been closed to her lately, and she missed the breath-taking impression that his mind left on her.

"How are you, brother?" He should have seen that coming. It crackled like static between them - the distance and disconnection. He had embarked on this mission, alone, or so he had thought. Now that Bishop was here, unable to go back for now, all that needed to be done was for him to open up the channels, to connect with her and touch base with her. To ensure that they were still in-sync, grounded, and one with one another. Contra mundum, no matter what. As it always had been and always will be, so long as the other was still living. It had taken him a long stretch of silence to process it all and take into account all he had bottled up over the past few weeks. "I don't know," he breathed out the words as though he were expelling a plain sigh. "There's just so much. I feel like my eyes have been opened, Bishop." The enthusiasm crept up in his voice as though it had been waiting there in his very core, waiting for the right moment to make its appearance. "There's so much out there than there ever was at home. I feel like I've been asleep all this time." His words had not meant to sound wounding, if Bishop had had the mind to hear it as such, but he quietly made an attempt at a buffer, "I feel alive." A partial and airy chuckle left his throat, but it was staved away with a shake of his head and a smile as he looked to his look-alike sister, "Alive, Bishop. Don't you feel the same way?" Hope, had it been a physical thing like a mask or a covering of some sort, could have engulfed him like a veil of willow branches. It was there, lining his muzzle in a small smile, in his mismatched eyes, hovering like a halo around the crown of his head. "I have never felt anything like this before," he cast his gaze out to the Marsh again, blinking once as he sniffed. "It's overwhelming. I don't know if I'll ever get my fill of it."

Chances are I have a BEN WHISHAW gif for that.

There was something about Rook that Bishop had always found delicious, enticing, mysterious despite their closeness. The whirring of his mind, the way he followed a train of thought and lost himself among them. Bishop was not so in touch with her mind, with rationality, with observations. She found it so hard to chase after her brother when he got like this. But it had always been beautiful, and she had always been content to watch. Yet... now, she found herself faltering as she listened to him and watched his eyes light up. Don't, she wanted to say, Don't go, wherever it is you go... Before she knew he would always come back to her, but these days she was never sure when he would slip through her teeth for good. Her eyes were brimming with feelings she felt very intensely but had no names for as he described these incredible sensations she wished so fiercely to know, too.

Eagerly, she looked out into the dusk-tinted world, looking for glimpses of what her brother saw. Reeds whistled in the breeze and the frogs continued to sound. But her senses felt dim compared to the way Rook made it all sound. In Renegade's Reach it was easier to see the beauty in things, the artwork of God's design. But it was hard to see what God's plan was here, to guess at the meaning of things. Disheartened, she shook her head. "I just feel confused, Rook. This realm doesn't welcome me the way it does you. I feel... out of place here." But oh how she yearned to live just a sliver of Rook's life. Envy flooded her lungs and she wondered if she would drown in it. Why could she not feel this way too? What flaw lurked in her heart, forcing God to obscure this salvation from her but to share it with her brother. "I feel lost." But her words were a poor vessel for her feelings.

"I miss mom," she whispered. "I miss everyone. Without them all, without you I feel like I'm not me."

Bishop confessed that she was confused. Rook's brow wrinkled and for the first time in what seemed like a long time, he turned to fully take in his sibling's face. She did not feel as welcome as he had been within the Lore; she felt out of place. He let out a soft whine. How could she have felt that way? Had they not entered the same place together? One side of his muzzle scrunched up in deep thought as she let him know that she also felt lost - this, too, sent him reeling. "You are not lost," he tried to smile at her, briefly nudging his twin's shoulder with his nose. "You have me. You'll have me for always, regardless of whatever it is that you're thinking." His tail came up in a wag, thumping twice against the cool, pebbled bank. He leaned into her, letting the tips of their similarly colored fur touch at long last. "You have me," repeated quietly, still staring out into the evening-cloaked landscape. "Saying that you're not you with me, without us, without our family, is like... it's like saying you're impossible." He took in a deep breath, holding it captive as he ordered and reordered his sentence in his head, wanting to make sure that what he was saying made sense. "You're not impossible, you are possible... and you're possible with me." As much as he wanted to rest his head to her temple, to close the distance between them, he didn't. Instead he slowly pulled back just enough to look at Bishop, genuine concern and worry making itself apparent in his eyes, "Do you understand?"

Chances are I have a BEN WHISHAW gif for that.

Although his mouth formed the words she longed to hear, some how their sincerity didn't reach her. Even without Namid here, the silver girl's presence weighed incessantly on Bishop's mind. Namid was forever intruding into her time with her brother, butting her nose in where it didn't belong. "I don't have you," she said, her mouth forming into a bitter pout as she leaned away from him. "She has you. You haven't been mine since I got here. It's like you left home and you left me." These were the things she had fought hard to keep to herself, for she knew that they would hurt her brother, but somehow she ended up saying them anyway. All that was left to wonder why she was this kind of monster and what kind of damage she had done. Somehow, justified or not, she sensed that in her attempt to pull him back to her she was instead shoving him towards Namid.

"No I don't understand! she cried, her voice full of real pain. Rook spoke in words that were so fancy, so fine but they made no sense to Bishop. "I'm me because of you. You're my twin, Rook, my twin," she whined as if she were begging, though she didn't know what for. "When you're not around, my mind goes everywhere, everything is so crazy and disorganized and... it's scary. And that's not the wolf I want to be. And when you're with her I feel that way too." Bishop had gotten so used to talking to her brother every day, to leaning on him and whispering all her thoughts into his head no matter how ridiculous they were. She had relied on him to be there, to be something to take care of since she couldn't take care of dad. But he didn't need her anymore. "I scare myself. I just... I scare myself."

Bishop's words stung and jabbed at him as though he had walked head first into a thicket of thorns. She even rejected his touch by leaning away, "I don't have you. She has you. You haven't been mine since I got here. It's like you left home and you left me." Rook's first instinct was to recoil, to also withdraw from her just as she had done to him. He managed to sit still though, the deepness and emotional turmoil in her words giving him a shock that he also should have foreseen. She continued to squall, calling him out on the momentary neglect he had unintentionally bestowed upon her. As quickly as his ears had come up, they fell back down as she told him that she was who she was because of him. Rook's lower jaw lowered so that his lips slightly parted, taken aback by the next wave of emotional outburst, "You're my twin, Rook, my twin." She was afraid, that much was obvious and, all the while, her brother was starting to become afraid of what he had done, what he might have started just by asking if he could embark on this journey to Relic Lore. "I scare myself, she then said, "I just... I scare myself." If he could have hugged her, held her close, he would have. In a heartbeat. With her being as she was, he was somewhat uncertain how to approach her. This wasn't the first time she had done such a thing as become so emotional that it rendered him speechless but, for the first time, it seemed, he was able to counter it. They were older now and as his logic-driven self saw it, he should have been able to meet her halfway just as he always had been able to in the past. At first he wanted nothing more than to yell back at her, to make her see sense, to envelope her with the words and tone he usually used to entice her back to him, calm and collected. His twin sister. Bishop. On a second impression, the words she had first spoken had slashed into him, bruised and lacerated him completely from within. "That's the way it is supposed to be," he flatly stated. Hadn't their parents almost always physically retrieved them from the borders or reminded them to never stray too far? Hadn't their family constantly kept them within their sight? "Life is supposed be scary," he reworded himself. "It's supposed to have trials and tribulations and temptation." He moved his tail so that it was kept close against him. "Bishop," he said her name in such a way that suggested that he might have been speaking to a bird with a broken wing. "I wish I could make you see," he murmured, his saddened eyes truly focusing on her, seeing her pain and her anguish as clear as day. "I really wish you could see yourself just as I see you now. You are my twin, and nothing and no one in the world could ever replace you." His lips sealed tight for a while as he tried to catch her gaze and full on attention, "If you can't hear me out, then tell me what you want to hear. What is it that you're crying out for me to do... for you? I promised Mom that I would do this... for Dad, for her, for our family... I trusted Namid to help us, and she has done nothing but that." His stare locked on her then, his eyes slightly narrowing in a dangerous fashion, "- if we're going to make this work, we have to let others in, to trust them, work with them. Prudence -" He dared to use her special, secret moniker, if only to try and fully establish and ground their connection to one another, "We can't do this all by ourselves if we're going to help Dad get better."

(This post was last modified: Jul 22, 2014, 12:25 AM by Rook.)

Chances are I have a BEN WHISHAW gif for that.

i waited so long because i really wanted this to be awesome and raw but it's not happening and i just gotta write it

Bishop had always had a hard time accepting things as they were, always caught up in the "why" and "how." She reeled and thrashed inwardly as her brother tried to coax her into this trap. "WHY" she whined loudly through her clenched teeth. This was all so painful and confusing and her head throbbed and she wanted to scream. "WHY is life supposed to be like this! It's just supposed to be shitty like this for no good reason?" Seething, she whipped her head away from him. She dare not raise her voice above a whisper now, "It seems like I'm the one with the trials, and you're the one with the 'temptations'."

Her heart stirred and her fury wavered when her brother spoke her name. She closed her eyes, imagining herself leaning into him and crying softly into his shoulder instead of acting upon the desire. Rook, oh Rook. He could say all the beautiful things he wanted, but still she felt such a distance between them. Even if she did try to touch him now, would she really reach him? He had rebuffed any attempt to talk about that woman, artfully redirecting her time and time again so subtly that she hardly noticed. If he didn't understand the kind of threat that Namid posed to them, to their relationship —if he didn't want to take her seriously— and refused to talk about Namid then was he really there? Were they on the same page?

"If you can't hear me out, then tell me what you want to hear. What is it that you're crying out for me to do... for you?"

Eagerly, she cut in here, her tone incredulous and her eyes wet as she whipped back to look him over. "—Can you even hear me right now, brother? I say twenty times I'm afraid of what kind of hold that woman has over you and you pretend like you have no idea what I want. I want to do this with you, without her. I want a say in who we travel with and trust. And I. don't. trust. her!—" Frustrated and no longer to sit, Bishop vaulted to her feet, her tail waving above her back.

Then he said her name, her true name, her just-twins name. It wasn't the name her parents had given her, it was the one Rook gave her. She choked. Her frightening posture was suddenly diminished, calmed by this name as the sister looked back at her brother with an unnameable intensity. A sigh escaped her, and she flopped back down to the ground. "I know that...." And then she was silent for a time.

"I don't know how to let others in, Rook. It feels like there isn't space in me for anyone else. And it doesn't help when I can't choose who I let in..."

Come up to meet you,
Tell you I'm sorry.
You don't know how lovely you are;
I had to find you,
Tell you I need you,
Tell you I set you apart.
Nobody said it was easy...
— The Scientist, Coldplay

There was a wince there, a grimace there, but Rook weathered the words that was his sister's tempest. She whined and grit her teeth but he held firm, merely listening to her as he allowed her to speak when he was through. If nothing else, this certain skill, this being able to withstand her outbursts was quite possibly the singular thing that might have set him apart from anyone else when it came to truly understanding Bishop. The mask on his face seemed to darken as he momentarily scowled when she had straightforwardly called him out for pretending, for unintentionally casting her out. Had it not been for his mismatched eyes, the one physical attribute he had acquired from their mother, he might have easily been mistaken for Borden, his father. He directed his gaze out to the water, to avoid briefly glaring at her. Then, after all was said and done, there it was, the eye of the storm: the "I know that...." and an admission when Bishop's guards and barricades had come down. He let the calm seep in, to cover them and grant both Lyalls some mental space between words. That was one thing Rook always appreciated when he was with his sister; sometimes there didn't need to be so many... words... Sometimes just being together, side-by-side as they were now was simply enough. In this particular moment though, he had an obligation to her, not particularly to soothe her but to include her in his course of action. Just like old times. "Then you don't have to," he whispered, finally looking back to her with a slight shake of his head from side to side. "All I ask is that you trust me. You don't need to trust anyone but me. You have to know that if I thought any of them - Namid, Lady Narimé, Titan - had meant me, you, us any harm, I wouldn't have thought to speak to them at all. I walked away from Klio before, shouldn't that have been enough to prove to you that I'm still capable of making sound judgements?" Again, he diverted his eyes from her face, taking in the dark outline of her shoulder and neck where he knew the richest hues of brown and ivory could rival those of aged bole and the spots on a newborn fawn. "I would not dare to put you in danger, or subject you to such loss..." It wasn't very often Rook brought up the topic of being truly separated from Bishop, but when he did, he broached the topic very carefully, almost like how one would suspend their forepaw just above the surface of a river or pond just until they could feel the temperature of the water against their paw pads. He gently nudged her shoulder then with his nose, smiling as he sought her eyes at last, "You should know that. I love you; and, I don't think I'd ever forgive myself if something happened to you and I could have prevented it." He cautiously nestled the side of his muzzle into the nape of her neck, his ears swiveling back for the time being, "I will help you find and figure what you want, Bishop. You look for that and let me deal with them - the botanists, the nomads, the princes, the healers, the monarchs - and we can continue on our journey. Together." His gaze crept up to the side of her brow, the tip of her muzzle, and the few black and white whiskers that she had on her maw, before drawing back so that he could face her fully again. His rounded ears slowly came up again, "How does that sound?"

(This post was last modified: Aug 07, 2014, 06:40 PM by Rook.)

Chances are I have a BEN WHISHAW gif for that.